Present day telephony voice networks have a network built around circuit switches, end offices, a toll network, tandem switches, and twisted pair wires (where the twisted pair wire couples the end office and customer premises equipment. These voice networks are referred to as a public switched telephone network (PSTN) and their services referred to as plain old telephone service (POTS). Due to bandwidth limitations of plain old telephone service (POTS), there is an inherent inability to efficiently integrate multiple types of media such as telephony, data communication for personal computers (PC), and television (TV) broadcasts. Accordingly, a new broadband architecture is required. This new architecture gives rise to a new array of user services.
Presently, least cost routing services may be provided for POTS services by locating a least cost route for a given circuit switched call between a caller and a called party, especially in a business setting have both private line and switched circuit connection opportunities. For example, private branch exchange systems automatically select a least cost route for a typical voiceband call. A leased private line, for example, a T1 carrier link comprising twenty-four separate channels may be utilized in preference to reliance upon the public switched network to take full advantage of the leased facilities. On the other hand, in an Internet Protocol Telephony Network (IPTN), voice telephony services are offered at no cost to the user but quality of service in comparison to PSTN calls suffers. A decrease in quality of service may be experienced by the caller or called party due to high traffic conditions or limitations in connecting facilities as increased delay or voice quality due to lost packets. Lost packets generally appears to the user as a degradation in signal-to-noise ratio. On the other hand, the Internet promises multimedia communication opportunities including but not limited to video teleconferencing, high resolution imagery transmission and high fidelity digital sound.
Notwithstanding the promise of the Internet, the tendency to date in existent voice over IP (VoIP) telecommunication billing systems is to emulate existent telephony billing arrangements. For example, International Publication No. WO 98/19448 published 7 May, 1998, by Ericsson of Sweden discloses a method of billing an Internet call in a conventional manner by doing an IP address assignment at a POP and by accompanying an A-number (calling party number) with a personal password or PIN that are collected at call placement. The call is billed according to the called telephone number, their location in reference to the calling party and the duration of the call.
Consequently, there exists a great opportunity to provide new methods and procedures for billing IP broadband subscribers for such multi-media communications and to further provide least cost routing as a function of quality of service in the new millennium.